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This and the next two issues of LegisIative Studies Quarterly will publish a group of articles based on papers presented at the 1988 G. E. Hendricks Symposium on the United States Senate. Held on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in October 1988, this symposium brought together leading students of the U.S. Congress. Their articles fall into three large categories, and these categories will be used to divide the articles among the three issues (see Appendix). Following this introduction, three historically oriented articles will appear in this issue. The August issue d l contain five articles on the organization and operation of the Senate, and the November issue will present six articles relating to Senate elections. Collectively, these articles constitute an impressive portrait of current research on the Senate. Why is it important to obtain such a portrait? Of what value was our symposium and the papers it produced? What did we hope to accomplish, and did we do it? In this brief introduction to the Hendricks Symposium studies, we address these and related questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relative performance of voting technologies by studying presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial election returns across hundreds of counties in the United States from 1988 to 2000. Relying on a fixed-effects regression applied to an unbalanced panel of counties, we find that in presidential elections, traditional paper ballots produce the lowest rates of uncounted votes (i.e.,“residual votes”), followed by optically scanned ballots, mechanical lever machines, direct register electronic machines (DREs), and punch cards. In gubernatorial and senatorial races, paper, optical scan ballots, and DREs are significantly better in minimizing the residual vote rate than mechanical lever machines and punch cards. If all jurisdictions in the United States that used punch cards in 2000 had used optically scanned ballots instead, we estimate that approximately 500,000 more votes would have been attributed to presidential candidates nationwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how the segmentation of voters based on decision-making processes, using means-end laddering research innovations and real-time interactive online interviewing, can aid in the formation of political communications strategy, including theme and message development. Design/methodology/approach - To demonstrate the application of these innovations in a political context, the paper uses data from a sample of 114 voters who were interviewed during the 2004 US presidential election campaign. The paper draws on three recent innovations to the means-end laddering methodology: elicitation questioning techniques that allow for a decision equity analysis between targeted groups; decision segmentation analysis; and real-time interactive online interviewing; and applies them to an electoral context. It provides an interpretation of the identified decision segments and an exposition of how these common networks of meaning can serve as the basis for targeted theme and message development. Findings - These three innovations, in concert, were found to provide an efficient set of methods to serve as the foundation for the campaign message development process. Originality/value - This paper provides deterministic research techniques for campaign strategists who want to understand voter decision making and demonstrates a combination of methodological and technological innovations that addresses the time, cost, and geographic limitations often associated with conducting voter decision making research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Hispanic voting behavior in the 2004 Presidential election. Our research makes a significant contribution to the literature on Hispanic politics, as this is the first study to apply theories of issue and economic voting to a nationwide sample of Hispanic voters. We demonstrate that, similar to Anglos, issues and ideology were highly influential in the vote choice of Hispanics in the 2004 election. However, using the best available data on Hispanic voting behavior for this election, a statewide aggregation of the National Election Pool (NEP), we demonstrate that in this election Hispanic voters placed more emphasis on moral values issues and national security than on traditional domestic issues such as the economy and education. This accounted for Republican gains beyond the overall increase in Bush's vote share from 2000 to 2004. We also show that moral values and national security had roughly equal importance in Bush's victory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two perspectives on a fundamental issue of elections as mechanisms of democratic accountability. One is the interelection floating voter hypothesis, which implies that it is the least informed segment of the electorate that contributes most to electoral change. The second perspective is from V. O. Key's argument that vote switching is rooted in rational policy concerns. A direct test of Key's formulation of the problem on the Reagan election victories of 1980 and 1984 adds to the evidence supporting Key's perspective. The reasons why some voters hold firm to particular parties and candidates while others switch support is well explained by their different positions on matters of party, policies, and judgments of the candidates. Vote switching is not simply the by-product of an ill-informed segment of the electorate responding to its meager grasp of the short-term stimuli of a campaign. Vote switchers appear to judge the policies and the performance of an incumbent against their best estimates of these qualities in the competing candidate. The data are from the 1980 and 1984 CBS/New York Times exit polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite attempts to mobilize communities of color, gaps in turnout among racial and ethnic minorities persist (e.g., Abrajano et al., J Polit 70:368-382, ; Pantoja et al., Polit Res Q 54:729-750, ; Kaufmann, Polit Res Q 56:199-210, ; Ramirez, Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci 601:66-84, , Am Polit Res 35:155-175, ). Scholars are only beginning to understand how parties or independent groups seek to mobilize these communities. In this paper, we develop and test the Differential Contact Thesis, which holds that turnout differences between whites and minority groups are influenced both by lower rates of contact by the parties and the use of less effective methods of contact. To test this, we examine data from the 2004 National Annenberg Election Study (NAES), 2004 American National Election Study (ANES), and the 2004 Miami Exit Poll. Our results support the Differential Contact Thesis: even controlling for the initial likelihood to be contacted by the parties, racial and ethnic minorities were less likely to be contacted using the most effective techniques. To some extent, non-partisan contact seems to compensate for the inattention of the major parties toward minority voters, but this contact is less likely to mobilize voters than contact from the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For too long, research on retrospective voting has fixated on how economic trends affect incumbents' electoral prospects in national and state elections. Hundreds of thousands of elections in the United States occur at the local level and have little to do with unemployment or inflation rates. This paper focuses on the most prevalent: school boards. Specifically, it examines whether voters hold school board members accountable for the performance of their schools. The 2000 elections reveal considerable evidence that voters evaluate school board members on the basis of student learning trends. During the 2002 and 2004 school board elections, however, when media (and by extension public) attention to testing and accountability systems drifted, measures of achievement did not influence incumbents' electoral fortunes. These findings, we suggest, raise important questions about both the scope conditions of retrospective voting models and the information voters rely upon when evaluating incumbents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses pre-election polls to forecast U.S. Presidential election outcomes in the states and the Electoral College. The approach is notable in three ways. First, we employ state-level polls to predict voting outcomes in the states; second, we associate probabilities with alternative election outcomes, and third, we identify states most likely to be pivotal in the Electoral College. Using information available on the day before the election, we estimated that the probability of a Republican victory in the Electoral College in the 2004 election was 47.27%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Findings from cross-sectional studies cannot tell us whether moving leads to changes in civic activity, because such studies do not observe the same individual's participation before and after moves. This paper treats both moving and participation as dynamic processes, analyzing data that cover 18 years within lives of two generations of Americans. The results suggest that our general understanding about who participates cannot account for the patterns evident in even the simplest of descriptions of this phenomenon. Moving is shown to disrupt moments of campaign activity. However, the specific patterns of this disruption across generations and types of acts lead to more questions about the mechanism by which moving interferes with the political activity of ordinary Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the American citizen is capable of constructing reliable political judgments without engaging in extensive cognitive deliberation, then criticism that public opinion is largely vacuous in character may overstate the implications of a politically inattentive citizenry. Heuristic processing, reliance on simple rules of judgment, provides a cognitive mechanism that may enable citizens to advance informed yet efficient issue appraisals. More specifically, application of heuristic processing to source cues-references to prominent political leaders-can allow individuals to extend evaluations of those leaders to the policies and issues with which they are associated. In this paper, discussion of heuristic principles of judgment facilitates specification of the expected relationship between source cues and two component processes of individual-level public opinion: opinion holding and opinion direction. Separate quasi-experimental analyses yield evidence consistently supportive of the heuristic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the effects of primary season presidential debates on public opinion. Using a quasi-experimental design, we investigate one of the Democratic debates conducted during the 1988 campaign. We attempt to link the actual statements of the candidates with the reactions of our subjects. We find that viewers' opinions of the candidates changed dramatically after watching the debate, and that these changes are related to subjects' assessments of the candidates' images and debating "styles" (rather than their presentations of substantive issue positions). We speculate on some of the reasons for our findings, and discuss the differences between primary season and general election debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until 1964, ideological conservatives tended to participate in presidential campaign activities at higher rates than liberals. Since then, Beck and Jennings (1980, 1984) have shown the variable nature of the participation-ideology relationship, arguing that ideologically extreme candidates have successfully mobilized their followers in particular elections. In this paper, we explain the "anomaly" of the 1980 election in which strong liberals participated at higher rates despite a very strong conservative on the Republican side. Using data collected over time in 1980 by the University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies (CPS/NES), we broaden the Beck-Jennings model to include participation during the primary season and hypothesize that mobilization of ideological groups may result from ideological candidates and the competitiveness or closeness of a nomination contest. We find that the ideological candidate model explains general election participation to a significant degree, while competitiveness considerations are more important for mobilization during the primaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the spending behavior of candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Particular attention is paid to the timing of receipts and expenditures over the complete 2-year election cycle. Incumbents raise and spend large amounts of money very early in the race, and this preemptive spending may have a great impact on the selection of challengers and therefore on electoral outcomes. In addition, a model of reactive spending is tested for the general election period. Incumbents' expenditures are a function of the underlying partisan division in the district, the strength of the challenge, and candidates' feelings of vulnerability. Incumbents are strategic actors who attempt to maximize their chances of reelection. Early in the term, they spend preemptively in an effort to influence the selection of their challengers. Later in the term, they spend in reaction to the strength of their challengers' campaign. The role of money in congressional campaigns is neither simple nor direct. More attention needs to be given to the strategic uses of money in the period leading up to the general election campaign as well as to the dynamics of receipts and expenditures over an entire election cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to assess the strength and direction of the attitudinal consequences of the tax revolt. An initial taxonomy of potential attitudinal effects is developed in the first section via a brief examination of the attitude-based explanations of the revolt. Those effect hypotheses are then tested via a pretest-posttest comparison group design analysis of 1976, 1978, and 1980 American National Election Study data. The results of those tests are discussed in the final section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tendency for negative information to have more weight than equally extreme or equally likely positive information appears in a variety of cognitive processing tasks, but has rarely been documented empirically in politics. This paper provides evidence for two types of negativity effects in electoral behavior: negativity in the formation of impressions (of Humphrey and Nixon in 1968, of McGovern and Nixon in 1972, and of Carter and Reagan in 1980), and negativity as a consequence of impressions (in the 1974 and 1978 congressional elections). Both post hoc rationalization and the nonequivalence of the positive and negative information were examined and ruled out as artifactual explanations for these results. Discussion centered around two possible explanations for negativity, a cost-orientation hypothesis (which holds that people are more strongly motivated to avoid costs than to approach gains) and a figure-ground hypothesis (which holds that negative information stands out against a general positive background). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Republican emergence in the South by analyzing the level of state senate elections the Republicans contest. The goal of this paper is to assess the measurable changes in the Republican southern strategy for contesting elections in the Reagan era. I find that Republican contestation in state senate elections has diffused into the rural areas during the Reagan era. In addition, the Republicans are increasingly contesting elections based on the incumbency status of the seat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes a study on the political ecology of Louisiana. The basic political tendencies have been persistent over long periods since their support is in distinct social strata and their strongholds are in certain geographic regions of the state. The study also shows that these tendencies correspond to the major parties on the national scene and that in certain crucial federal elections they find expression through defections from the party which dominates the Solid South. In this research paper, the author shows that these basic tendencies continued to prevail during the presidential and gubernatorial elections of 1952 and to demonstrate how they influenced the result of the presidential election. The theme may be stated as the continuity of basic political tendencies in a situation of change. In political ecology, one proceeds on the assumption that in the political system an analysis of the geographical distribution of support for a party or candidate enables one to find out what social classes and what other categories of voters make up that support.

One of the core tenets of a well-functioning representative democracy is that the people who vote to elect government officials are representative of the public. Here we reinforce the idea that reality is far from this lofty ideal. We document the extent and nature of inequities in voter participation in the United States with a level of granularity and precision that previous research has not afforded. To do so, we use a unique nationwide dataset of approximately 400 million validated voting records across multiple election cycles. With this novel dataset, we document large and persistent gaps in voter turnout by race, age, and political affiliation. Minority citizens, young people, and those who support the Democratic Party are much less likely to vote than whites, older citizens, and Republican Party supporters. Minorities, youth, and democrats are also much more likely to live in local communities where fewer individuals vote—areas that we term turnout deserts. Turnout deserts are especially pernicious given that they are self-reinforcing—bolstered by the social dynamics that fundamentally shape citizens' voting patterns. Our results show just how glaring inequities in political participation are in the US. These patterns threaten the very fabric of our democracy and fundamentally shift the balance of political power in the halls of government towards the interests of whites, older citizens, and republicans. They illustrate that participation in the United States is strikingly unequal—far from the ideals that this country has long aspired to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of popular participation in U.S. partisan politics between 1787 and 1825, arguing that political participation began with the Jeffersonian political revolution and not with the Jacksonian model of democracy. The author examines the electoral history of Jeffersonian New York and the Columbia County Republicans of 1806, discusses how the democracy of the era was linked to property rights and land tenure, and analyzes the political actions of attorney Martin Van Buren.

This article discusses the significance of the concept of The Will of the American People (TWAP) in the 2000 U.S. election. In 2000, TWAP was measurable by looking at Florida alone. TWAP is the balance votes in Florida. Nearly all those involved in the election, Democrat or Republican, have conspired to support this definition. No one says that a President elected by one vote is only a tiny fraction of a President. TWAP would be said to have been expressed even if the majority was only one clear vote.

This paper presents the first accurate estimates of taxpayer participation in the presidential election campaign fund. Those estimates show public participation to be considerably higher than previously believed. A modest positive relationship between income level and participation is also demonstrated. These findings are related to participation rates for other forms of mass political activity and to reformers' intentions regarding public financing of election campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of congressional spending have typically found a large positive effect of challenger spending but little evidence for effects of incumbent spending. Those studies, however, do not adequately control for inherent differences in vote-getting ability across candidates. "High-quality" challengers are likely to receive a high fraction of the vote and have high campaign expenditures, even if campaign spending has no impact on election outcomes. To avoid that bias, this paper examines elections in which the same two candidates face one another on more than one occasion; differencing eliminates the influence of any fixed candidate or district attributes. Estimates of the effects of challenger spending are an order of magnitude below those of previous studies. Campaign spending has an extremely small impact on election outcomes, regardless of who does the spending. Campaign spending limits appear socially desirable, but public financing of campaigns does not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research considers whether there is evidence of legislators' issue avoidance, or un- willingness to reveal one's position. It links, for the first time, two important areas of inquiry: legislative decision making and issue avoidance. The data describe senatorial behavior over eighteen years, involving approximately 200,000 individual voting decisions. During that time, senators were polled by CQ after each missed roll call, and asked to indicate their positions. Issue avoidance is a subset of the nonresponses to that poll. A conceptual model of voting and position taking is presented, incorporating both behaviors and intentions. It defines two kinds of issue avoidance: "proactive," deliberate avoidance at the time of the roll call, and "reactive," avoidance decided on after votes missed inadvertently. Application of the model permits inferences about intent. Proactive avoidance accounts for 12% of nonvoting during the terms' first five years. It also represents 40% of failures to reveal positions. As much as another 19% of nonvoting results in reactive avoidance. A sixth-year increase in issue avoidance is indicated, although not conclusively. The findings strongly suggest that models of legislative voting should he amended to account for both proactive and reactive avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses district-level electoral returns to estimate the size of the incumbency advantage in 24 U.S. states over the period from 1970 to 1986. Our major findings are two: first, the incumbency advantage in the median state roughly doubled over the time period investigated; second, this increase can be explained in terms of the growth of legislative operating budgets and, by inference, in casework and other particularistic services provided by state legislators to their constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper voter turnout in state legislative elections is explored and compared with turnout in other state and national races from 1968 through 1986. The relationship between turnout and margin of victory is then examined in both state house and state senate elections. Overall, the pattern of turnout in elections to select members of state legislatures is not distinctively different from the pattern in other races. Voter turnout behaves as a system that persists throughout the United States, despite the almost endless variation in districting arrangements, competitive patterns, and legal practices employed to fill the nearly 7,500 available seats at the state legislative level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The level of competition in House elections has been shown to result primarily from the quality of the challenger. In this paper. I demonstrate that the same dynamic functions in Senate elections. The quality of Senate challengers varies, and the higher the quality of a challenger the more votes he or she receives and the more likely the challenger is to defeat an incumbent. Higher quality challengers are more likely to run in states where the pool of such candidates is large; their appearance in a contest is not due to any personal or political characteristics of the incumbent. Challenger quality matters, in part, because higher levels translate into more campaign money, but quality also indicates other skills that produce additional votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes an attempt to describe special elections to the U.S. House of Representatives in terms of their most important characteristics-turnout, victory margins, and especially the flow of party control. Such elections are the U.S. counterpart of by elections in Great Britain. The analysis focuses on the 97 special House elections that were held between 1954 and 1978; data on general elections, both on-year and off-year, are also employed for comparative purposes. Special elections are found to resemble off-year elections in several respects, though there are also some crucial differences between these two less visible types of House elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the decline of party voting in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1887 to 1968 is analyzed. The levels of party voting (by Congress) are fitted to a regression line, with the results showing a high period of party voting (1890-1910), an intermediate period (1911-1940), and a low period (1941-1968). A model is developed to measure the effects on party voting of external variables-party homogeneity, party conflict, presidential partisanship, and turnover; and internal variables-centralized leadership and mucus strength. Both types of variables are shown to have some effect, but external-and particularly electoral-variables are more important. Since these variables are culled from contemporary research, the results demonstrate that contemporary hypotheses and findings regarding legislative parties are generalizable over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data on the perceptions of candidates who opposed one another in electoral contests for the United States House of Representatives. The candidates studied here are 30 freshmen elected in the fall of 1970 and their opponents in the 1972 general election. Candidates were asked to evaluate their performance compared with their pre-election expectations and to evaluate the impact of presidential coat-tails, redistricting, party identification, issues, and personality on the outcome of the election. Incumbents generally performed better than expected while challengers did worse. Challengers were more likely to believe that presidential coattails and party identification were important factors. Incumbents were more likely to stress personalities and issues. Incumbents more often believed they were helped by presidential coat-tails and redistricting than did challengers. When responses of candidates who opposed one another were analyzed, we see that their perceptions are more often in agreement than might be expected by chance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the effect of election base of executive boards on the internal political life of national unions in the U.S. Unions exist to represent their members and therefore should exhibit characteristics of representative government. The significance of the election base for union executive board members depends upon the role of executive boards in the government of unions. The opportunities for effective dissent and opposition within a national union, without regional elections, are often almost nonexistent.

Presents a reply to the commentary of Douglas H. Blair on the article "The Electoral College and Voter Participation Rates: An Explanatory Note," which appeared in a 1980 issue of "Public Choice." Effect of the electoral college on voter participation rates in the U.S.; Circumstance in which the small differences in the political power structure will tend to result in a higher voter participation rate; Distortion of the geographic pattern of voter participation due to the existence of the Electoral College.

Comments on the reduction of voter participation rates in the U.S. due to the existence of the Electoral College. Details of the study on the distribution of power under the Electoral College; Probability that a randomly-selected voter could reverse the Electoral College choice by reversing his or her vote; Model under which the popular-vote plurality of the Democratic candidate is a normally-distributed random variable.

Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? There is considerable debate about the validity of data extracted from social media for studying offline behavior. To address this issue, we show that there is a statistically significant association between tweets that mention a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and his or her subsequent electoral performance. We demonstrate this result with an analysis of 542,969 tweets mentioning candidates selected from a random sample of 3,570,054,618, as well as Federal Election Commission data from 795 competitive races in the 2010 and 2012 U.S. congressional elections. This finding persists even when controlling for incumbency, district partisanship, media coverage of the race, time, and demographic variables such as the district's racial and gender composition. Our findings show that reliable data about political behavior can be extracted from social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do distributive benefits increase voter participation? This article argues that the government delivery of distributive aid increases the incumbent party's turnout but decreases opposition-party turnout. The theoretical intuition here is that an incumbent who delivers distributive benefits to the opposing party's voters partially mitigates these voters' ideological opposition to the incumbent, hence weakening their motivation to turn out and oust the incumbent. Analysis of individual-level data on FEMA hurricane disaster aid awards in Florida, linked with voter-turnout records from the 2002 (pre-hurricane) and 2004 (post-hurricane) elections, corroborates these predictions. Furthermore, the timing of the FEMA aid delivery determines its effect: aid delivered during the week just before the November 2004 election had especially large effects on voters, increasing the probability of Republican (incumbent party) turnout by 5.1% and decreasing Democratic (opposition party) turnout by 3.1%. But aid delivered immediately after the election had no effect on Election Day turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on political communication effects has enjoyed great progress over the past 25 years. A key ingredient underlying these advances is the increased usage of experiments that demonstrate how communications influence opinions and behaviors. Virtually all of these studies pay scant attention to events that occur prior to the experiment-that is, in 'pretreatment events.' In this article, we explore how and when the pretreatment environment affects experimental outcomes. We present two studies-one where we control the pretreatment environment and one where it naturally occurred-to show how pretreatment effects can influence experimental outcomes. We argue that, under certain conditions, attending to pretreatment dynamics leads to novel insights, including a more accurate portrait of the pliability of the mass public and the identification of potentially two groups of citizens-what we call malleability reactive and dogmatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from 1870 to 2008, the authors attempt to resolve competing claims about the nature of how citizen initiatives affect turnout in the American states. They provide evidence that mobilization is the mechanism through which direct democracy increases turnout. Contrary to previous research, they show that the adoption of the initiative and past usage of the process do not lead to higher turnout in a given election. Citizen initiative campaigns mobilize the electorate in current elections, and the number of competitive initiative elections has a greater effect on turnout than uncompetitive races. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article employs data gathered in a 2006 national survey to study how the American electorate evaluates a trade-off between competitive elections and winning to implement preferred policies. The results show that voters do not share in the prevailing elite consensus about the overriding virtues of competition. A multilevel model indicates that ideological extremism, partisanship, social trust, and several other individual-level variables have predictable relationships with preferences for winning or competition. In addition, electoral margin in the 2006 congressional district election interacts with support for winning or losing candidates. Voters supporting candidates who are soundly defeated take refuge in competition, whereas those supporting candidates who win decisively view victory as a means of implementing policy preferences. Additional analyses show that preferences for winning and competition influence various forms of political participation. By emphasizing public involvement in policy making, voters expressing a preference to win echo “responsible party government” critiques of the democratic shortcomings of the American political system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Elections are now a common feature of countries across regime types, yet we know little about what leads people to perceive an election as fair, or how the democratic context shapes the ingredients of fairness judgments. While the conduct of a process is most important for perceptions of fairness in established democracies, 'procedural fairness' may not travel to non-democracies, where economic outcomes occasionally take precedence over procedure. Additionally, individual level characteristics, such as political engagement, may also shape how people view the fairness of elections. Using original experiments conducted in the United States and China, I find procedural considerations are most important for fairness judgments, across democratic contexts and largely independent of political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telephone surveys have been a principle means of learning about the attitudes and behaviors of citizens and voters. The single mode telephone survey, however, is increasingly threatened by rising costs, the declining use of landline telephones, and declining participation rates. One solution to these problems has been the introduction of mixed-mode surveys. However, such designs are relatively new and questions about their representativeness and the intricacies of the methodology remain. We report on the representativeness of a post election mixed-mode (Internet and mail) survey design of 2006 general election voters. We compare sample respondent means to sample frame means on key demographic characteristics and examine how mail and Internet respondents differed in terms of attitudes, behaviors and demographics. We find that overall the Internet respondents were representative of the population and that respondent choice of mode did not influence item response. We conclude that mixed-mode designs may allow researchers to ask important questions about political behavior from their desktops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This research has been conducted with the aim of determining if celebrity endorsers in political party advertising have a significant impact on UK voter intentions. The use of celebrity endorsements is commonplace in the USA, but little is known about its effects in the UK. This research also aims to incorporate the use of celebrity endorsements in political party advertising with the political salience construct. Political salience represents how prominent politics and political issues are in the minds of the eligible voter. Design/methodology/approach - A 2 (endorser: celebrity; non-celebrity) × 2 (political salience: high; low) between-subjects factorial design experiment was used. The results show that celebrity endorsements do play a significant role in attitudes towards the political advert, attitudes towards the endorser and voter intention. However, this effect is significantly moderated by political salience. Findings - The results show that low political salience respondents were significantly more likely to vote for the political party when a celebrity endorser is used. However, the inverse effect is found for high political salience respondents. Practical implications - The results offer significant insights into the effect that celebrity endorsers could have in future elections and the importance that political salience plays in the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement. If political parties are to target those citizens that do not actively engage with politics then the use of celebrity endorsements would make a significant impact, given the results of this research. Originality/value - This research would be of particular interest to political party campaigners as well as academics studying the effects of advertising and identity salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to examine whether generally trusting people are any more likely to be the same people who are also more politically trusting. In particular, the research focuses on the relationship between interpersonal trust and three political trust-related constructs: trust of government form, political cynicism, and incumbent trust. Design/methodology/approach - The intention was to model the impact of general or interpersonal trust - i.e. Rotter's Interpersonal Trust scale, on three specific dimensions of political trust - i.e. "trust in government form", "political cynicism", and "incumbent trust". This was achieved through a questionnaire, which was mailed to a random sample of 4,000 American households. Findings - The structural aspects of the model reveal a significantly strong path between Rotter's broad-based interpersonal trust scale and the more specific incumbent trust measure. The model also indicates a modestly strong relationship between interpersonal trust and trust in form of government, and a weak relationship between interpersonal trust and political cynicism. Originality/value - This research should prove useful to academic research, campaign managers, and political strategists in terms of reinforcing the importance of different aspects or components of trust, as well as their interrelationship, and how they might impact political strategy and campaign development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of congressional elections have argued that an increase in constituent diversity increases the level of electoral competition. Following models of boundedly rational candidates, we argue that there is strong reason to believe that the opposite is true. As the complexity of the electoral landscape increases, challengers will have a more difficult time locating an optimal platform when facing an experienced incumbent. Using data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Study, we construct a novel measure of district complexity for U.S. House districts and test whether the entry of quality challengers and the incumbent's share of the two-party vote are affected by the complexity of the electoral landscape. We find strong support for the hypothesis that complexity benefits incumbents for both indicators of electoral competition, which stands in contrast to most of the existing literature on diversity and incumbent performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the influence of discussion frequency, network size, and 3 variables that together entangle the often misunderstood concept of network heterogeneity: discussion frequency with like-minded individuals (“safe” discussion), discussion frequency with nonlike-minded individuals (“dangerous” discussion), and diversity of discussion based on the proportion of safe and dangerous discussion. Data were gathered via a postelection random-digit dial telephone survey of residents of a battleground state ( N = 600) in November 2004. Three central dependent variables were measured: factual political knowledge, political knowledge structure density, and political participation. The results support the argument that different aspects of political discussion have different implications for different democratic outcomes-and that different conceptualizations and measures of discussion “heterogeneity” produce different results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Progressives believed that political parties, especially those in the cities during the first part of the past century, undermined the quality of democracy in the country. The patronage that held the parties together led to corruption and inefficiencies. While some of the reforms from the Progressive Era, such as the secret ballot and direct primary, have been adopted almost universally, Charles Adrian wrote about one, the nonpartisan ballot, that was adopted in many places, but not all. More than three fourths of municipal elections and about half of all U.S. elections use the non-partisan ballot. This constitutes a huge quasi-experiment in the impact of political parties on governance and representation. As most political scientists agree that competitive political parties are necessary for healthy representative democracy and the centrality of political parties for voter decision making, this experiment is interesting and potentially significant for understanding the role parties play in elections and policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom argues that national economic perceptions generally have an important impact on the vote choice in democracies. Recently, a revisionist view has arisen, contending that this link, regularly observed in election surveys, is mostly spurious. According to the argument, partisanship distorts economic perception, thereby substantially exaggerating the real vote connection. These causality issues have not been much investigated empirically, despite their critical importance. Utilizing primarily American, and secondarily British and Canadian, election panel surveys, we confront directly questions of the time dynamic and independent variable exogeneity. We find, after all, economics clearly matters for the vote. Indeed, once these causality concerns are properly taken into account, the impact of economic perceptions emerges as larger than previously thought. As well, the actual impact of partisanship is clearly reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of contested elections in the House have pointed to party electoral goals as motivating their resolution in Congress. However, little systematic research has been conducted on why such elections were contested to begin with. Using historical data and new statistical analysis of such elections from the late nineteenth century, I find that, in contrast to the claims of some scholars, political principles as well as electoral objectives mattered to parties seeking to contest elections. In addition, election conditions, particularly the means by which southern white Democrats attempted to repress the vote of southern blacks, independently influenced the probability of contestation. This finding has implications for our understanding of Republican Party strategies and electoral conditions in the South during the period, and the origins of contested elections at other times in American history.Polity (2007) 39, 155–178. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300082 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voter turnout increased sharply in 2004. At the same time, 2004 marked a change in campaign strategy, as both presidential campaigns and allied organizations placed unprecedented emphasis on voter mobilization. This article attempts to assess the degree to which grassroots mobilization efforts contributed to the surge in voter turnout. We conclude that although grassroots efforts generated millions of additional votes, they probably account for less than one-third of the observed increase in turnout. Increased turnout in 2004 primarily reflects the importance that voters accorded the presidential contest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme variation in the extent of inequality emerged early across the New World colonies established by the Europeans, and we hypothesized in previous work that these contrasts persisted over time through systematic differences in the ability and inclination of elites to shape legal frameworks to advantage themselves. We find support for this view in how the rules governing the extension of suffrage evolved over time within the United States, and across the societies of the Americas. Polities with labor scarcity and greater equality generally led in broadening the franchise and attaining high rates of participation in elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]